Does your neighborhood have a grocery store? Not all do. What if that store actively supported local farmers and carried fresh fruits and vegetables from around the state? What if your neighborhood had its own farmers’ market and you could get to know the farmers directly? What if there was a community garden down the street where you could grow your own vegetables—tomatoes and tomatillos for salsa, green beans for Thanksgiving casserole?
If your neighborhood doesn’t have these things, what would it take to create them?
These are the questions the Food Policy Council is asking. How do we make sure that fresh, nutritious, locally and sustainably-grown food is affordable and available for everyone? How do we make food planning an integral part of urban planning, right along with transportation and affordable housing?
The Council, a citizens’ advisory group to the City of Portland and Multnomah County, is charged with helping the city and the county build a sustainable food system. This means that we eat what’s grown closest to home, we support our local farmers who steward the land and we make sure that fresh food is available and affordable for everyone.
Focusing on whole food systems from farmers to consumers, the Council finds ways to remove barriers and take advantage of opportunities. Some solutions are relatively simple, like changing the zoning laws to allow a neighborhood to block off a street on Saturdays for a farmers’ market. Or setting up the Debit Food Stamp Program in the farmers’ markets. This was recently made possible when wireless technology eliminated the need for telephone lines and power cords.
Other problems are harder to solve, such as the fact that some neighborhoods just don’t have the economic base to support a grocery store. But even there, creative solutions are possible. New Seasons Market, for instance, has opened stores between neighborhoods with different income levels. The mix of incomes serves the lower income neighborhood with the support of the higher end. The store is successful and both neighborhoods have access to good, local food. Farmers’ markets are discovering similar strategies.
Urban renewal projects provide excellent opportunities to reassess the availability of good food. When the Hope VI New Columbia housing project was being designed, a group of food advocates helped integrate a community garden, a plaza for a future open air farmers’ market, and a grocery store in the business center.
Urban agriculture is just starting to attract renewed interest. During World War II, Americans were encouraged to grow “victory gardens” in their yards and vacant lots. (See Victory Gardens) Today there’s a long waiting list for community gardens in Portland. The Council has started the Diggable City project to identify tillable land within the city and start pilot projects of small-scale urban farming so people can grow their own food.
Looking for ways to increase the demand for locally-grown food, the Council approached the corrections system in Multnomah County, asking that they purchase 3 produce items locally. Aramark, the food service provider, came back and said “We can do better than that, we can buy 12.” Not only that, the company has contracts with six other counties and plans to explore implementing the same strategy in those counties as well.
Conversations are just starting around “farm to school” and “farm to hospital” programs. What if the hospitals in your city actually served delicious food from seasonal fruits and vegetables grown locally? What if your kids knew the local farmers because they delivered directly to their school? What if the kids grew the food themselves?
What does the foodscape look like in your neighborhood?
Monday, December 04, 2006
Here’s to Farmers’ Markets
As I walk through the farmers’ market, I’m struck by what is going on here. Beets and chard gleaming in their baskets. The smell of chili peppers roasting over an open flame. Knots of people chatting and laughing. A farmer’s child perched on a box behind the stand, in full Halloween dress – pointy hat, orange hair and striped tights. Fresh, handmade tortillas warming my hands in their tin foil wrapper. Painted gourd vases and jalapeño cheddar bread, smoked salmon and fresh oysters. The laughter, the smiles, the music that has the bread man dancing. It’s a place alive and vibrant.
Farmers’ markets are starting to become more common here in the United States. But in much of the rest of the world, open-air markets are a long-standing tradition – the market square, the plaza, the bazaar. From Asia to Europe to Africa and South America, farmers and artisans have always brought their wares into town to sell them to the townspeople.
We Americans have been mesmerized in the last few decades by the convenience of the megamart. You can get anything, at any time of the day, any time of the year. But as I walk through the farmers’ market, my eyes are opened to so much more.
Yes, the food is enticing – crisp and fresh and almost glowing. But stop for a moment and just listen. Do you hear neighbors greeting one another? Do you hear farmers chatting and laughing with people as they move through?
It’s the end of the season now and the market is winding down. There’s a bit of sadness mingled with the fog. But even as the leaves drift down, there’s the promise of tomorrow. “See you next year!” “You can find me at the holiday market too.”
That promise is about more than just next season. No matter how citified our lives have become, here at the market, we have a chance to touch the earth. To delight our eyes and our tongues with fresh, carefully tended vegetables. To actually meet the farmers themselves. And their children, costumes and all. Think about it—just the fact that these children are here is a sign of hope. Here’s a whole new generation of farmers who are growing up connected with the people who are nourished by the food they grow.
There’s a sigh of relief, barely audible even to ourselves, when we know that our farmers will be here week after week and are even finding ways to keep a few of these markets open through the winter. We all know we need food. At the market, we start to realize that we need the farmers too. When I hold a beautiful, fresh bunch of spinach in my hand, I begin to appreciate just how much they contribute to my life.
The food, yes—it’s beautiful and delicious. I just feel better when I use it to create a meal for my family. But as I look around I realize that food, the ultimate gatherer of people, is helping us restore our communities.
We come to the market for the vegetables, but we walk away with lighter hearts and cheerful smiles. Food brought us here and, almost without our being aware of it, food is helping us rebuild those connections so vital to our own lives and to our neighborhoods. Here at the market, we can slow down, listen to the music, stamp our feet against the cold, run into an old friend, make a new one. Little by little we become stronger as a community.
Don’t get me wrong—farmers’ markets are no panacea for the social ills our cities face. But they are moving us in the right direction. Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher, said it best:
Farmers’ markets are starting to become more common here in the United States. But in much of the rest of the world, open-air markets are a long-standing tradition – the market square, the plaza, the bazaar. From Asia to Europe to Africa and South America, farmers and artisans have always brought their wares into town to sell them to the townspeople.
We Americans have been mesmerized in the last few decades by the convenience of the megamart. You can get anything, at any time of the day, any time of the year. But as I walk through the farmers’ market, my eyes are opened to so much more.
Yes, the food is enticing – crisp and fresh and almost glowing. But stop for a moment and just listen. Do you hear neighbors greeting one another? Do you hear farmers chatting and laughing with people as they move through?
It’s the end of the season now and the market is winding down. There’s a bit of sadness mingled with the fog. But even as the leaves drift down, there’s the promise of tomorrow. “See you next year!” “You can find me at the holiday market too.”
That promise is about more than just next season. No matter how citified our lives have become, here at the market, we have a chance to touch the earth. To delight our eyes and our tongues with fresh, carefully tended vegetables. To actually meet the farmers themselves. And their children, costumes and all. Think about it—just the fact that these children are here is a sign of hope. Here’s a whole new generation of farmers who are growing up connected with the people who are nourished by the food they grow.
There’s a sigh of relief, barely audible even to ourselves, when we know that our farmers will be here week after week and are even finding ways to keep a few of these markets open through the winter. We all know we need food. At the market, we start to realize that we need the farmers too. When I hold a beautiful, fresh bunch of spinach in my hand, I begin to appreciate just how much they contribute to my life.
The food, yes—it’s beautiful and delicious. I just feel better when I use it to create a meal for my family. But as I look around I realize that food, the ultimate gatherer of people, is helping us restore our communities.
We come to the market for the vegetables, but we walk away with lighter hearts and cheerful smiles. Food brought us here and, almost without our being aware of it, food is helping us rebuild those connections so vital to our own lives and to our neighborhoods. Here at the market, we can slow down, listen to the music, stamp our feet against the cold, run into an old friend, make a new one. Little by little we become stronger as a community.
Don’t get me wrong—farmers’ markets are no panacea for the social ills our cities face. But they are moving us in the right direction. Lao Tzu, the Chinese philosopher, said it best:
Cultivated in the individual, character will become genuine;
Cultivated in the family, character will become abundant;
Cultivated in the village, character will multiply;
Cultivated in the state, character will prosper;
Cultivated in the world, character will become universal.
translated by Lin Yutang: http://www.terebess.hu/english/tao/yutang.html#Kap55
What is a Sustainable Food System?
Imagine sitting by a pond, quiet and peaceful. Now listen and watch. Do you hear all the buzzing and chirping around you? Do you see the fish darting in the shadows? The more you look, the more you see—thousands of different kinds of plants and animals all making up this little ecosystem.
Now imagine someone decides to make the pond more “efficient.” One type of fish, bird, and bug. The best and the brightest. One variety of tree, bush and flower. What happens to the pond? This particular fish eats only green algae, leaving the red algae unchecked. It’s not long before the pond is overrun in red goo and neither fish nor fowl can live there.
I know this a simplified picture, but it’s similar to what is happening in our food system today. We’ve focused on efficiency, producing vegetables at the lowest possible cost, and we’ve constructed an impressive system to accomplish it. However, now we are beginning to see the damage it is causing. Our huge, centralized food system is actually reducing our ability to grow food in the long term.
Sustainability means providing for today and investing in tomorrow. It means valuing the land, the people who work it, and the food they produce. A sustainable food system is one in which we foster diversity, take care of the soil, eat what’s grown closest to home, and manage our waste.
Cultivate Diversity
Diversity is nature’s standard. A sustainable system is a diverse system. This means more smaller farms around the country, rather than a few enormous agribusiness corporations. It means numerous varieties of fruits and vegetables, rather than the select handful that are currently chosen based on yield, cost, and transportability.
Replenish the Soil
If we feed the soil, it will continue to feed us. With crop rotation and cover crops, we prevent soil erosion, whereas monoculture and row-cropping leave large tracks of land barren for much of the year. Cover crops and green manure actually put nutrients back into the soil, while our current chemical fertilizers and pesticides not only deplete the soil, but pollute our rivers and contaminate our groundwater.
Eat Locally
When we support our local farmers, our food is fresher. It was picked this morning, not flown in from Chile or trucked thousands of miles from out of state. We learn to eat what’s in season and to really appreciate strawberries when they arrive.
Our food is healthier. The recent outbreak of e. coli in spinach points out the flaws in our centralized system. With these huge processing plants, if one batch of spinach is contaminated it ruins the entire production. When we eat locally, if there is a problem, we can track it down quickly and correct it.
Our economy is healthier. When we buy our food from local farmers, we turn those dollars more times before they exit the state. Not only that, our money is actually spent on food, rather than on the fuel it takes to ship it to us.
Convert Waste to Food
In nature, all waste is reused; it becomes food for another part of the system. We are continuing to see how to apply this principle in agriculture to replace petroleum-based products. We are finding ways to use plant and animal waste (even used cooking oils) to create adhesives, lubricants, electricity, even fuel for our cars. The more we produce here at home, the more we reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Imagine our farmlands, alive and buzzing again. Imagine fresh local vegetables and clean homegrown fuel for our cars. Imagine what we can do.
Now imagine someone decides to make the pond more “efficient.” One type of fish, bird, and bug. The best and the brightest. One variety of tree, bush and flower. What happens to the pond? This particular fish eats only green algae, leaving the red algae unchecked. It’s not long before the pond is overrun in red goo and neither fish nor fowl can live there.
I know this a simplified picture, but it’s similar to what is happening in our food system today. We’ve focused on efficiency, producing vegetables at the lowest possible cost, and we’ve constructed an impressive system to accomplish it. However, now we are beginning to see the damage it is causing. Our huge, centralized food system is actually reducing our ability to grow food in the long term.
Sustainability means providing for today and investing in tomorrow. It means valuing the land, the people who work it, and the food they produce. A sustainable food system is one in which we foster diversity, take care of the soil, eat what’s grown closest to home, and manage our waste.
Cultivate Diversity
Diversity is nature’s standard. A sustainable system is a diverse system. This means more smaller farms around the country, rather than a few enormous agribusiness corporations. It means numerous varieties of fruits and vegetables, rather than the select handful that are currently chosen based on yield, cost, and transportability.
Replenish the Soil
If we feed the soil, it will continue to feed us. With crop rotation and cover crops, we prevent soil erosion, whereas monoculture and row-cropping leave large tracks of land barren for much of the year. Cover crops and green manure actually put nutrients back into the soil, while our current chemical fertilizers and pesticides not only deplete the soil, but pollute our rivers and contaminate our groundwater.
Eat Locally
When we support our local farmers, our food is fresher. It was picked this morning, not flown in from Chile or trucked thousands of miles from out of state. We learn to eat what’s in season and to really appreciate strawberries when they arrive.
Our food is healthier. The recent outbreak of e. coli in spinach points out the flaws in our centralized system. With these huge processing plants, if one batch of spinach is contaminated it ruins the entire production. When we eat locally, if there is a problem, we can track it down quickly and correct it.
Our economy is healthier. When we buy our food from local farmers, we turn those dollars more times before they exit the state. Not only that, our money is actually spent on food, rather than on the fuel it takes to ship it to us.
Convert Waste to Food
In nature, all waste is reused; it becomes food for another part of the system. We are continuing to see how to apply this principle in agriculture to replace petroleum-based products. We are finding ways to use plant and animal waste (even used cooking oils) to create adhesives, lubricants, electricity, even fuel for our cars. The more we produce here at home, the more we reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Imagine our farmlands, alive and buzzing again. Imagine fresh local vegetables and clean homegrown fuel for our cars. Imagine what we can do.
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